Considering that Kensington Quarters has some of the best meat in the game, we’re pretty pumped about their upcoming charcuterie dinner on Tuesday, March 31 at 7 pm.

Oh, but wait. The menu goes beyond the typical prosciutto wrapped melon to bring guests an inventive meal that lets the meat really shine. The dinner begins with a charcuterie board, featuring bresaola, veal terrine, head cheese and ‘nduja. Then a shrimp and salami salad with cucumber, basil and hot sauce, followed by smoked goat belly served with egg yolk, baby lettuce and onion relish. Then porchetta with royal trumpet mushrooms, carrots, and radishes, and dessert will be caramelized cake with lomo and chocolate.

With the continuing restaurant boom in Philadelphia comes an array of new choices to visit during everyone’s favorite after-work past time: happy hour. It’s that blissful hour or two after work where you can complain to your co-workers about what’s going on in your life over cheap wine and bite-sized snacks. Now with all new options, it’s time to branch out from your favorite watering hole and try these six new happy hours in Philly.

You walk by Bryan Mayer’s butcher case at Kensington Quarters, and you develop certain expectations about what awaits you in the dining room. These deepen as you pass the meat locker, a sauna-paneled light box punctuated by widescreen windows framing floodlit views of hanging hog carcasses. By the time you reach your seat (the chairs face butcherblock tabletops anchored to honest-to-God I-beams), there’s just no two ways about it: You’re in for meat haunches so stupendous, they apparently require structural-grade steel to hold them up. Read more »

In the wake of it’s two-bell review from Craig Laban, Kensington Quarters is hosting a five-course offal dinner for $75 per person. It’s on January 27, starts at 7 pm, and will feature, of course, all the various squiggly bits of animals that don’t get sold as steaks or chops. Each of the five courses will be served along with wine pairings (handy for getting past the notion of eating lamb liver and marmalade) and guests will eat in the loft area of the restaurant with chef Damon Menapace cooking in the open kitchen.

This month, Kensington Quarters is opening its second-floor classroom space for weekly and monthly hands-on classes. Initial classes will focus on butchery and charcuterie, later expanding into preserving, pasta and cocktails. The butchery and charcuterie classes will range in price from $65 to $145 and will include tasting samples as well as butchered product for students to take home.

Weekly classes will focus on specific techniques and will last about 90 minutes. Larger format classes that focus on butchering of a single whole animal will be roughly three hours long.

The classes are led by Kensington Quarters’ butcher, Bryan Mayer. Mayer has been a butcher-instructor for seven years and has trained with respected butchers across the country and around the world. At Kensington Quarters, he works with local farmers, making trips out to the farms and staying involved throughout the entire process to ensure the animals are being raised free of chemicals, antibiotics, hormones and GMO feed. “Every day, we hope to educate our customers by being knowledgeable and passionate about what we do,” says Mayer. “Now, in our demo space, we’re able to teach them even more about where this food comes from, why it’s great and show anyone at any skill level what to do with it.”

Very nearly a year after we first told you that Kensington Quarters would, at some point, be opening (and nearly two years after the enterprise first began to take shape), Michael Pasquarello and Bryan Mayer’s bar, restaurant, and butcher shop officially opened its doors last night.

You would never have known that the place is a new addition. A crowded bar of patrons sipping wine on tap and cocktails with names like “The Wishbone” and “The Cleaver,” a steady, busy dining room, and chef Damon Menapace calmly calling orders to his team behind the line in the open kitchen.

Yesterday, we brought you the menus. But for our first visit we tried a little bit of everything and, naturally, we brought a camera to share the experience with you.

Tonight, Kensington Quarters opens on Frankford Avenue in Fishtown. The combination butcher shop, restaurant and classroom is unique to Philadelphia and it will be interesting to see how the concept grows and evolves.

For now, we have the opening dinner, dessert and drink lists. The restaurant is starting off with a tight menu of small plates, starches and entrees. The menu runs from $11 for rare beef to $26 for a pork shoulder entree, served with potato torta and mustard greens. Though Kensington Quarters does include a butcher shop, the menu is far from strictly carnivore as the menu includes dishes that are or can be prepared for vegetarians.

For drinks, Kensington Quarters offers wine ($8 to $10.50) and beer ($5 to $6.50) on tap plus a list of cocktails.

The classroom in the upstairs loft (which will also double as an event space) will host butchering classes as well as guest chef lectures and cooking demos that will acquaint guests with Kensington Quarters’ farm partners. A class schedule will be announced shortly after opening.